Equestrians Try to Preserve Area Stomping Grounds

For equestrians living in the northeast San Fernando Valley, nothing means home like dirt trails and horses whinnying in the backyard.

But they fear that the horse-keeping lifestyle that has reigned for decades in such communities as Lake View Terrace, Sylmar, Sun Valley, Sunland, Shadow Hills and Tujunga will disappear soon, as developers snatch some of Los Angeles’ last patches of open space.

Los Angeles counts 2,000 licensed horses, mostly in the northeast Valley near the San Gabriel and Verdugo mountain ranges. City officials estimate there are hundreds more that they don’t know about.

In the last decade, stables have given way to stucco subdivisions, and corrals to corner convenience stores. Cowboys still roam the backcountry and boulevards, but so do yuppies yearning for a nearby Starbucks.

To accommodate a growing population, city planners and developers say they need every inch of land for homes, public facilities and tax-generating retail establishments.

“The city does not have enough land,” said Bob Sutton, Los Angeles’ deputy planning director. “We need land for everything.”

Later this month, the City Council will discuss ways to balance development and open space for equines. Their talks were spurred, in part, by legislation introduced last fall by Councilwoman Wendy Greuel calling for safer horse trails and improved processing of land-use entitlements.

“Horse-keeping is a tradition,” said Greuel, whose constituents include equestrians. “It contributes to the city’s rich diversity. It’s important that we don’t lose this way of life that many people don’t know still exists.”

The San Fernando Valley was once a country getaway for city dwellers south of Mulholland Drive. Ranches with orchards and citrus groves dotted the land. Haystacks, barns and riders were as common as today’s strip malls and master-planned tracts.

Communities such as Chatsworth in the northwest Valley have a dwindling number of equestrian-zoned properties. Scenically, it looks suburban, compared with the rural area to the east, with its feed stores, saddle shops and a stray horse trotting along Foothill Boulevard.

“The horse is the bellwether of an open-space community,” equestrian Mary Benson said. After development takes over, “once there’s no place to ride, the horse disappears ... a lifestyle disappears.”

Here, Benson and others describe their lifestyle, and why it’s so important to preserve it.

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Most mornings, Benson savors the views behind her Sun Valley house -- which sits on a half-acre -- as if it’s the last time she’ll see them.The dusty landscape seems to change by the week, Benson said on a recent weekday morning. The brown-haired woman with a dirt smudge on her skin rode Sierra, her platinum-blond mustang, through steep chaparral canyons that will soon become a housing development near Stonehurst Avenue and Sheldon Street.

“Look,” Benson said, pointing to sage, hyacinths, California peony and yellow native wildflowers. “This has been here forever. Where will they go once the houses come in?”

She also worries about the two red-tailed hawks she spots soaring above the hills every day about 10 a.m. And the deer, raccoons, coyotes and squirrels that have inhabited the area since long before people moved in.

“They’ll become the road kill of the day,” Benson said softly as she noted that there are already plenty of animal carcasses on foothill streets.

Like many of her neighbors, Benson, 55, is a native Angeleno who has lived her whole life around horses. Many local residents grow their own vegetables and live on fixed incomes. Their modest country homes look as though they belong on an Iowa farm, not in one of the world’s largest cities known for its lavish dwellings.

“This is the lifestyle we have always known and loved,” Benson said. “We feel passionate about keeping it this way.”

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Friends Andrea Guttman and Carol Roper, both retired, like their Shadow Hills community because most people understand horses come first.

Few think it’s outrageous to spend $10,000 at the veterinarian’s office. Or weird to chat with animals. When neighbors quarrel, they say, all is forgotten when a horse becomes sick.

“It’s nice not to have to defend or explain yourself,” Guttman said, sitting with Roper in her big backyard, which is home to two friendly horses. “Everything’s about the horses.”

Even their speech centers around equines. For instance, a conversation on a horse’s meal might sound like this:

“Did you feed?”

“No, I need to go. I got to feed.”

Or when a pregnant horse is due, one might ask: “Did she drop?”

And if she did, “What color is it?”

Roper sighed. “I think the area will remain equestrian for 10 years or so,” she said. “Beyond that, I think it will go.”

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It wasn’t until they got horses that Jorge Chavez and Jose Garcia felt comfortable calling Los Angeles home. The parched vegetation, dirt roads and fellow riders remind Chavez and Garcia of their childhood homes in El Salvador and Mexico, respectively.

“It’s part of my culture,” Garcia, 44, said with a tip of his cowboy hat outside the Stallion Market, a popular Sun Valley store where equestrians tie their horses outside and break for a quick meal.

Chavez and Garcia stop there several times a week. As the sky turned pink on a recent evening, the friends shared beef jerky at a wagon-wheel table and dreamed of one day owning a home nearby.

They live in the Valley’s dense urban swaths, a 10-mile drive from their horses’ boarding stables in Lake View Terrace. Most mornings, they rise early to brush and feed their animals before heading to jobs in the service industry. Sometimes they bring their children, so the kids can learn responsibility.

Evenings, the two friends like to ride. “It relaxes me,” said Chavez, 40. “My mind doesn’t feel so much pressure.”

Garcia agreed. “The stress goes away,” he said. “The horse sees you and he gets so excited. He knows you. Horses are so smart. I don’t think I could be without one.”

On weekends, they take their families to the Stallion or to Hansen Dam, where relatives and friends ride horses, celebrate their culture and remain connected in a large, busy city.

“It’s a big thing in the American Hispanic culture,” Garcia said. “It’s our tradition.”

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Not many neighborhoods have a dry cleaner and tailor shop for horses.

For 14 years, Paula Bryant has run Equine Elegance, a horse apparel laundry service in a Lake View Terrace retail complex that houses a saddle store and a dance studio offering yoga for equestrians.

The British-born, 60-ish woman works long hours cleaning and mending blankets, bandages, pads and fly masks for horses, as well as outfits for the riders.

A horse’s well-being comes before business. Bryant, who has ridden since she was a girl, washes equine gear in a biodegradable detergent used in hospitals and hotels that costs $200 for a five-gallon container.

She uses top-quality fleeces, cottons, nylons, suede and velvets for horse accessories. When she notices a shy horse at a stable with duct tape around its legs, Bryant decides to make the animal some comfortable, quilted wraps for ample support.

“Horses have lots of love to give,” Bryant said as she stuffed saddle blankets into a 50-pound washing machine in her cluttered shop, sandwiched between the Foothill Freeway and Foothill Boulevard. “They’re a part of the family in this community.”

Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts with nails painted red, Bryant hopped in her truck and headed to a nearby ranch, where she delivered clean blankets and greeted the horses.

“Hi, Silver Belle,” she cooed, blowing into the horse’s nostrils. “That way they can smell you. It’s bonding.”

In a nearby stall, Gabrielle rested in wood shavings, refusing to eat after recovering from an illness. “I hope you feel better soon,” Bryant said.

Occasionally, she hears newcomers complain about the smell of manure and about people riding their horses in the street.

“They should go back to city living,” Bryant said, shaking her head in annoyance. “This is horse country. I can’t imagine it being anything else. I can’t imagine life without horses.”